Security Essay: The Threats Of Internet Security

This report presents to you the different aspects of Internet security and focuses on the risks that come along with it and the ways in which it can be prevented. We hope that this report awares you a lot on these matters and can help you in having a better, and more importantly, safer computer.

The Threats to Internet Security- Hacking, Malware and Spyware

A number of threats to a computer's overall security are created or made more serious by connection to the Internet. These include hacking and malware. Hacking is a commonly used term for gaining unauthorised access to a local computer via a network. Hacking, even if the hacker does not have a malicious reason to do so, is a breach of privacy and hence, information that is stored by a user into an account or document is open to other people and can be edited or deleted by the hacker.

Malware (short for malicious software), can be further classified to viruses, worms and Trojan horses. A virus is a piece of program code that can keep replicating itself within a data or program file, thus 'infecting' other files and corrupting them, along with the device the data is stored in, and most of these viruses are made and sent to other devices by users from the internet unknowingly. Thus, virus spreads from one computer to another either by a network or

This is why many computer users have begun encrypting, or secretly encoding their data. Encryption may include creating a digital signature or encrypting email texts if they have been intercepted during a pharming attack. Online shop and bank servers usually store users' passwords in an encrypted form in case an attacker gains unauthorised access to them. Users can also use the secure HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protocol for keeping their account information secure, as HTTPS is encrypted as